Sunday, October 6, 2013
Bill Maher's "Wal-Mart shoppers" New Rule from last night.
As you know I have my own issues with Wal-Mart and the people who go there, so I found this especially entertaining and painfully accurate.
By the way there were a number of good segments on the show, including this one from Alexandra Pelosi asking New Yorkers what they knew about Obamacare.
I love the medical chip lady, "I don't know how you don't know about it, but it's in the news."
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Must see movie of the week.
This movie is a smart, visually impressive thriller, that rarely lets up.
There is no way that I can adequately describe how enveloping this film is, but if you ever wondered what it would be like to walk in space, THIS might be as close as you can get without first going through astronaut training at NASA.
There have been a few naysayers concerning the physics of the film, or the believability of the story line, but I will leave it to none other than Buzz Aldrin to convince you that it meets and exceeds the highest standards for a believable thriller set in space.
Damn that was a good movie!
P.S. Make sure to see it in 3D if you can. Believe me when I say you will miss out on a lot if you don't.
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Essential but unpaid Weather Service employees in the Alaska bureau insert secret call for help in their nightly bulletin.
Someone at the National Weather Service’s Alaska bureau has a message for those who have shut down the government: “PLEASE PAY US.”
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| Check the left hand side and read down. |
Although many National Weather Service employees are considered “essential” and are therefore exempted from the furloughs caused by the government shutdown.
However, as Dan Sobien, present of the NWS Employee Organization told Popular Science, these “essential” employes aren’t being paid.
“There’s no money to pay them,” he said. “Nobody knows when anyone’s going to get paid.”
In the meantime, these employees are being issued IOUs if they work despite the lack of compensation for their labor.
People need to be paid for their work, and asking them to work without compensation while the people who caused this train wreck are still able to draw their pay is unconscionable. (And yes I know a number of millionaire lawmakers have said they will refuse their pay during the shutdown as well, in a purely symbolic gesture. But let's face it, MOST of these guys simply use their Congressional pay for cab fair, tipping doormen, and renting hookers anyhow. Nobody in THEIR families are going to go to bed hungry due to this shutdown.)
I have to imagine that if this thing goes on muhc longer there will be crowds of furloughed federal workers with torches and pitchforks at the ready.
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Rep. Barton: Obama Will Negotiate With Terrorists But Not Speaker Boehner
Glastonbury Tickets Sell Out In Record Time
Glastonbury ticket sales have sold out in a record time of one hour and 27 minutes.
Organisers Emily and Michael Eavis said they were "blown away" by the response.
In a statement, they said: "We're sorry that many of you missed out on a ticket.
"We genuinely try to make the ticket system as fair as it can be, but when demand outstrips supply, it is an unfortunate inevitability that some people will be left disappointed."
Sales got off to a shaky start on Sunday morning with technical issues affecting the first half an hour of sales.
The remaining 120,000 tickets for next year's event went on sale at 9am, with more than a million people pre-registered to buy the biggest festival ticket of the summer.
Weight of demand appeared to have slowed things down temporarily and official ticket agent See Tickets tweeted its apologies for a "difficult half hour".
The system stabilised at around 9.30am, with Emily Eavis thanking fans for their patience.
The Rolling Stones debuted at the festival in 2013 The £210 tickets were selling at a rate of 3,000 a minute, according to See Tickets, and by 10am 80,000 had already been sold.
Some fans were able to get their hands on a limited number of tickets before Sunday's main sale when 15,000 coach and ticket packages went on sale on October 3. They were snapped up within half an hour.
People who missed out will get another chance when a resale of returned tickets takes place in the spring.
Many fans took to Twitter after the big ticket dash to celebrate their luck - or express their frustration at missing out.
Harry Gartside tweeted: "An hour and 40 minutes of internet queues only to be told they've sold out, absolutely gutted #Glastonbury."
Michael Eavis says next year's headliners will be Glasto first-timers "After all that excitement, I'm going back to bed to rest my refresh finger. #glastonbury," posted Alice Marshall.
Glastonbury's founder, Michael Eavis, said last month that he already had the headline acts lined up for 2014.
Speaking to the NME, he said they were "more in less in place" and would be three bands that had never played at the festival before.
The Rolling Stones were the big draw at this year's event, playing the Somerset festival to mostly positive reviews.
The 2014 event takes place between Wednesday June 25 and Sunday June 29.
Article Source here
Author: http://news.sky.com
Mexican monster truck wreck kills 8, hurts dozens
Witnesses said the driver appeared to hit his head on the interior of the truck as he drove over old cars, before the vehicle drove into a crowd of spectators.
CHIHUAHUA, Mexico — An out-of-control monster truck shot into a crowd of spectators at a Mexican air show, killing at least eight people and hurting 80 others, dozens seriously, officials said.
Carlos Gonzalez, spokesman for the Chihuahua state prosecutors' office, said the driver appeared to have lost control of the truck after leaping over a pile of cars it was crushing during a demonstration at the "Extreme Aeroshow" on Saturday.
Some witnesses said the driver appeared to have hit his head on the interior of the truck as he drove over the old cars, with at least two reporting seeing his helmet come off before the massive vehicle drove into the crowd of terrified spectators, who tried to flee.
"I fell over, and when I turned around I saw the tire very close. It hit me and threw me to the other side," Jesus Manuel Ibarra, 41, said as he was treated for injuries to his arm and hip.
Gonzalez said the accident killed at least one child and hurt 80 people, 46 of whom remained hospitalized early Sunday. He said the number of dead and injured could rise as officials received updated information Sunday morning. The local health system listed the names of 67 injured people on its Facebook page, calling urgently for blood donations and help from local doctors and nurses.
Gonzalez said prosecutors were looking into the possibility of a mechanical failure that left the driver unable to release the gas pedal. Several witnesses said, however, that the driver appeared to have become incapacitated when he struck his head during the show, in which the truck drives at high speed over smaller cars, leaping into the air as it crushes their roofs.
Spectator Daniel Dominguez, 18, said he was happily watching the show with a group of relatives when the truck came down hard in the middle of the cars.
"The driver hit his head and his helmet flew off," Dominguez said. "The truck came directly at where we were."
His 11-year-old sister was in surgery for injuries to her legs, and his mother was treated for minor contusions.
The air show was canceled after the accident that happened during the second day of the three-day show in a park on the outskirts of Chihuahua, the capital of Chihuahua state.
Article Source here
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By Ricardo Chavez of Associated Press
Gina Gershon: 10 steps to becoming Donatella Versace for Lifetime's 'House of Versace'
This Saturday marks the premiere of Lifetime’s latest film, House of Versace. Based on Deborah Ball’s book,House of Versace: The Untold Story of Genius, Murder, and Survival, the film gives an in-depth look at Donatella Versace’s life in the years after her brother and renowned designer Gianni Versace was shot and killed at the height of the brand’s success. It follows Donatella, played by Gina Gershon, as she falls into a world of drugs, disorder, and chaos. And even though Versace recently told WWD, “Since Versace did not authorize the book on which it is based, the movie should only be seen as a work of fiction,” actress Gina Gershon still had a very large task in front of her when she took on the part: Playing a well-known public figure with a very distinct look.
We caught up with Gershon to talk about her amazing transformation into the iconic fashionista. Here’s your checklist for the long road to becoming Donatella Versace:
The body: “You have to lose weight and start working out like a fiend, especially your arms because she has those amazing arms, which was good because I needed to do that anyway so that forced me into doing it. It was right before summer so it was like, ‘Alright, I’ll do this.’”
The voice: “Start smoking a lot of cigarettes, which I wasn’t really used to, but I had to learn because she smokes quite a bit and it also helps with the voice. I can’t do her voice unless I have that sort of thing going on.”
The face: “You gotta have some tape to flatten out the face when you need to. You pull it a little bit. That helps with the lips. Her lips get kind of wider as she gets older.”
The shoes/walk: “High, high heels! You have to wear super high heels at all times even when you’re going to the gym. She’s a little thing and she likes to be big, and she wears those heels like nobody’s business. But it also helped with the walk. The tighter the skirt and the tighter I made my waist — sometimes a corset — and the higher the heels, I felt like I could fall into her walk and her stance a little bit easier. She kind of walks with her hips more, her hips are jutted forward and her shoulders are a little bit caved in, which is completely the exact opposite, I’m usually more swayback-y. So I had to really really concentrate on that probably the most of anything.”
The accent: “I listened to her non-stop. I would listen to her as I was going to sleep; I was listening to her in my trailer. Luckily for me, she’s done a lot of interviews, and I’ve done Italian accents before, but hers is very different. Not only is it Southern Italian, she comes from Calabria. The more Southern you get, the lazier the sound becomes and the wider it becomes. But then on top of it she has a very specific Donatella-esque accent. And she’s really funny, so she’s got a very dry sense of humor. I really started totally going for her accent, but then I guess, with TV, they want to understand what I’m saying. [Laughs] The truth is, if I was really doing Donatella, she’s tough to understand sometimes. I kept requesting we use subtitles, but no one really went for that suggestion. But I was kind of being serious. But that was one thing: I had to pull back on her accent, which kind of bummed me out a little bit, but I also understood why people want to hear what I’m saying.”
The make-up: “I had a zillion pictures of her … It’s like painting your face looking at someone else’s. You’re just putting the shadows and the highlights in a different area. She has a bit of a longer, wider forehead than I do, so I would lighten it up as much as possible. I love makeup, and I love lighting, and I love changing my face. It’s like painting. It’s all an optical illusion, an then hopefully if the lighting’s right then you really can create that illusion.”
The hair: “It was a really nice wig which was important. When I first got the gig I said, ‘Listen, the wig’s gotta be great,’ because I hate when you watch these sort of movies where it’s supposed to be someone and the wig is wrong. I find it so distracting. Her hair is part of her look. She’s got this iconic look, and she’s had that hair since she was 11 years old. If you saw an invisible face with that hair you’d be like, ‘Oh that’s Donatella Versace,’ so it was really important to me that we got the wig just right in different periods of her life.”
The eyebrows: “I can’t say I looked great after I’d leave the set because then I had to dye my eyebrows white as well, and I dyed the front of my hair white just so it looked. I wanted the illusion of my hair being further back, like a longer forehead. I looked like a crazy alien once the alien came off. I put my hat on, went home, and didn’t look in the mirror because it was too scary.”
The clothes: “She’s like a little teeny tiny thing; she’s like a little Barbie doll. She’s always had a great body, so the clothes, I found a couple vintage pieces from that time period that I was really happy with and the costume lady was happy with, and then some of the stuff we just had to try to recreate, which is tough. Versace’s Versace for a reason because they build those dresses so you look incredible, but unless you have the time to do the corsets and the pulling the way they do it, it’s not quite as fabulous. [The movie's] an illusion, so hopefully it shows up. Some of the clothes I thought were amazing; some of them I thought were not great. When it’s not really Versace, it’s not really Versace.”
The presence: “The most important thing after you get the look together, and even before you get the look together, hopefully you capture the essence of the person. That’s the most important job you have as an actress playing someone. I was really interested in how shy she was. I know she seems so flamboyant but there’s an actual real shyness that she has, and there’s a softness and a vulnerability, but then there’s that absolute protection that she has. Her sense of humor I thought was really important; she kind of has a very dry wit. And who she trusts and who she feels comfortable with and who she doesn’t, I found that informed how I played certain parts.”
And although Gerson has never met Donatella, she didn’t have a problem taking on the role. She actually preferred it. “At a certain point, I didn’t want to [meet her]. If I had met her before I probably wouldn’t have done it because you feel very protective over people. Although I feel like it’s ultimately a very flattering portrayal of her. I only have super respect for her,” Gershon said. “But I’ve done projects where I’ve been in touch and worked with the living person of who I was playing, and I think what happens psychologically or subconsciously, you start protecting them in weird ways, so you don’t play certain scenes as intensely as you would had you not known them.”
So how then did she prepare? “I read anything I could on her. I read all of her interviews; I watched every single piece of video tape that she had. There was a really great French documentary when they were getting ready for a show, which I thought really was pretty helpful. It showed her personality and what she was like and how she dealt with people, the rhythm of how she spoke.”
All in all, Gershon calls the role “one of the most challenging parts I’ve ever done” due to the film’s large amount of “emotionally trying” scenes, but that doesn’t mean Donatella never smiled. “There’s a couple scenes that were certainly fun before everything started going wrong and she was just sort of fabulous and in her element. There’s something really fun about her,” Gershon said.
Article Source here
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Palin on the attack again. This time she does not take aim at the President, or even Democrats however, THIS time she throws her rhetorical bombs at the Grand Old Party itself.
It is another Breitbart article, which purports to have interviewed Palin about an article that appeared earlier in the Daily Beast.
Here are the pertinent portions:
Palin told Breitbart News that these establishment financiers cannot relate to the average American worker and are throwing a "fit" because Wall Street knows they are in a whole new ballgame where their influence is diminishing.
Palin was responding to an article by David Freilander in Thursday's Daily Beast in which prominent Republican establishment financiers showed disdain for the conservative grassroots while being unable to identify exactly what a "precinct captain" is.
Palin, who started her political career on the local level as an outsider before eventually challenging the GOP establishment in Alaska to become governor, said that the "GOP high roller machine can’t win elections with their cash anymore."
"If they could, all the money they threw at Romney would have paid off," Palin said, referring to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's inability to galvanize the blue-collar conservative base during the 2012 presidential election. "It’s the average American – the grassroots Tea Party patriot with enthusiasm and boots on the ground – who wins elections": So I say call these guys out and expose the fact that they no longer control any conservative movement because they’re not the voice of the people. See, some of these Wall Street guys basically want to use the GOP for three things: They want low taxes for themselves; they want lots of cheap foreign labor (aka blanket amnesty); and they want to be safe (though most won’t send their own kids to fight our wars, they don’t want anyone blowing up buildings in Manhattan; so they’re all for sending our sons and daughters to whatever foreign hell hole beckons to make sure the bad guys stay off our soil)."
Palin, the avatar of the Tea Party movement whom the Republican establishment has tried to eviscerate and whose endorsement former South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint (R) said had the most influence in Republican primaries, was not finished excoriating the establishment financiers who were berating the Tea Party:
"Ask yourself if most of them really care about America’s industrial base or can even relate to the American worker and our values. The particular fat cats who are so often used as anonymous sources to trash the grassroots see this latest Tea Party effort to keep essential government open as just a distraction. They’re throwing a bit of a fit because this is a whole new, needed ballgame where their money can’t buy elections anymore."
You may have picked up on the fact that these answers seem a little too coherent for Palin, which means they undoubtedly sent her the questions, and then received a ghostwritten response by e-mail.
In the article which seems to have angered those over at the defunct Breitbart.com, and possibly Palin's ghostwriter as well, it claims that during this meeting between wealthy Republican donors and Rep. Greg Walden, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, the donors did not understand what a "precinct captain" was, however it is not their lack of knowledge concerning political ground tactics that so angered the Right Wing, and the Grizzled Mama.
It is this:
It is unlikely that the gilded power brokers in the Republican Party are likely to join their local county political club any time soon, but as the stock market wobbles amid the government shutdown and the continued demand for an Obamacare delay, a number of GOP donors are wondering if it is time for a little outside counter-pressure to sap the Tea Party of some of its energy. To be clear, none are considering joining the Democrats, and they find plenty of fault with President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The deficit, taxes, and regulation remain top concerns. But several top GOP donors say figuring out a way to “break the fever”—as Obama once put it—or at least keep their fellow party members from damaging the economy any further has become Topic A in their social set.
Essentially the gist of the Daily Beast's article is that GOP donors are tiered of watching the Republican party get dragged around by their nutsack by a bunch of poorly educated idiots, who seem determined to destroy the country in the name of insane ideological viewpoints.
And speaking of poorly educated idiots, this was the final word from Palin, or her ghostwriter, on the article:
Palin told Breitbart News that "the day the GOP machine abandons the grassroots patriot – the heart and soul of the party who actually gets people elected – is the day the GOP elephant is extinct."
"This keeps up and I’m not sticking around to watch it happen," Palin said.
Yeah, well as we know "sticking around" is not exactly a Sarah Palin strong point.
However I can only imagine the huge sigh of relief that will come from the Republican party once this ill manner, out of control, parasite finally detaches from them and swims off to cause havoc under the banner of somebody elses's political organization.
If you thought John Boehner was drinking celebratory cocktails before....
P.S. Another thing about this Breitbart article which caught my eye is that they get the name of the Daily Beast's journalist completely wrong. They refer to him as " David Freilander" when in fact his name is "David Freedlander." You know when your "journalism" is this sloppy, it is a little hard to give you any credibility.
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Pat Robertson tells a woman that she needs to tithe more in order to solve her husband's medical issues, NOT spend that money getting medical treatment.
I know the man is a fossil and that some attribute these more scandalous responses to dementia, but I disagree. What Robertson is espousing is essentially faith healing, which states in an authoritarian fashion that the advancements made in medical research by man are inspired by Satan and the only way to true healing and salvation is by reaching out to God.
And for a televangelist like Pat Robertson that reaching out takes the form of demanding that they give him their money.
In my opinion this kind of scam should be against the law, and it would be, if it were not cloaked in the camouflage of Christianity.
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When you realize that your political positions are just way too extreme.
Or that the American system is so fragile that it can be taken over from within by a small group of zealots making impossible demands.
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